Abdominal scintigraphy with 99Tcm-labelled red cells in the detection of rebleeding from peptic ulcers

The technique of 99Tcm-labelled red cell scintigraphy as a means of detecting rebleeding was investigated in 33 patients with bleeding peptic ulcers. Scintigrams were performed twice during the 24 h period succeeding diagnostic endoscopy. There was scintigraphic evidence of rebleeding in 23 patients but this was clinically manifest in 14 patients only. Thirteen of the 14 patients with clinical rebleeding had positive scintigrams while only in one patient with clinical rebleeding was the scintigram negative (P less than 0.05). These results show that rebleeding is common and often clinically inapparent during the first 24 h following gastroscopy but that in the absence of scintigraphic rebleeding serious clinical rebleeding is unlikely to occur.